


long-limbed, not lovely

by untrustworthyglitch



Series: monster virgil [1]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Monsters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 00:45:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14738928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/untrustworthyglitch/pseuds/untrustworthyglitch
Summary: The thing is, the sides aren’t human. They look human, sure, but that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. Their physical forms are constructs at best, held together on willpower alone. Patton has freckles. Logan is slight and angular. Roman is muscular and tanned. The dark sides are horrible, shambling creatures made of fear and darkness. Virgil… well. He’s doing his best.A fic featuring darkside!monster!Virgil who really, really just wants a break.





	long-limbed, not lovely

**Author's Note:**

> initially posted as a fic on my tumblr (untrustworthyglitch.tumblr.com) where you can feel free to come to say hi! i'm making this into a series so stay tuned for more of this!!

The thing is, the sides aren’t human. They look human, sure, but that doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things. Their physical forms are constructs at best, held together on willpower alone. Patton has freckles. Logan is slight and angular. Roman is muscular and tanned. The dark sides are horrible, shambling creatures made of fear and darkness. Virgil… well. He’s doing his best.

At this exact moment in time, Virgil’s best is not quite good enough. Try as he might, he can’t quite shake off the anxiety that sends cloying shadows swirling around his fingertips. A quick glance in the mirror shows him pale skin, almost white, with dark shadows at his temples and under his eyes. The eyes are the worst part, he thinks idly, running his forked tongue over the razor edges of his teeth. They’re slit-pupiled and dark, a purple so lifeless that they’re nearly black, huge and sunken in his face.

Virgil sighs and blinks at his reflection. He hates this. He hates having to work so hard to look even vaguely human. Even now, when he is heart-stoppingly  _ wrong _ , he is far from his baseline physical state. It could be much worse, he supposes, so he grits his teeth-- _ ow, sharp _ \--and concentrates.

With a feeling like an ice cold rain, Virgil’s skin shudders. Color comes back into his cheeks and his eyes brighten, brown blooming to cover the darkness. He lets out a shaking breath as his teeth shrink. He’s gripping the sink with claw-tipped fingers, but soon they’re nothing but shaking, human hands. He lets out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and rolls his shoulders. They pop as the bones settle into their rightful places.

Sometimes, he thinks he understands why Deceit spends all of his time flaunting some of his less human attributes. It’s exhausting to force himself into an ill-fitting frame like the one he pretends to own. Deceit, lazy or confident or perhaps just hellbent on being as terrifying as possible, embraces it. The scales, the eye, they’re jarring at first, but the others are used to them. Surely they could get used to Virgil?

He shoves that thought back down the instant it occurs to him. No. They wouldn’t. Patton would scream and Roman would hate him again and Logan would stare at him with cold, calculating eyes, and Virgil would shatter into a million pieces. He can’t do that. He won’t.

“Virgil?” Patton calls from right outside the bathroom door. Virgil startles hard and his spine shifts, elongating and stooping until he hits his head on the light fixture. He bites back a groan and clears his throat, trying to will away the double-tone that he knows will be there when he speaks.

“Yeah?” Okay, that was okay, not much distortion. He bends to look at himself in the mirror. His eyes are wrong again, but his skin isn’t translucent, and his teeth haven’t sharpened into fangs yet. This is salvageable. He can do this.

“Come on down to the kitchen when you’re ready,” Patton says. “I have a surprise!”

And just like that, Virgil’s pulse is quickening and there are shadows gathering at his joints and his hands are bent into crooked, razor-tipped claws. He  _ hates _ surprises, even when he knows logically that Patton means him no ill will and would never surprise him with anything that could hurt him. But just because he knows and understands something doesn’t mean that he’s not going to react negatively, and now he’s going to have to start calming himself down all over again.

The complete picture of the monster that Virgil shoves under a human skin is horrifying enough to tear a scream from even the bravest of throats. He’s tall and bent, rail thin and deathly pale, dark veins visible at his temples and joints. He’s sharp in all the places a human should not be. His bones jut at sickening angles. His tongue is forked and he has far, far too many teeth. His fingers end in claws and his knees bend backwards and if any of the others saw him, he would be abandoned again like the monster he is.

Virgil meets the flat darkness of his eyes in the mirror and takes a deep breath, blinking back frustrated tears. He  _ hates  _ this.

There’s a knock at the door that makes Virgil jump. He hits his head on the ceiling and lets out an involuntary curse, hands flying up to touch at the forming bruise. His hand comes away wet with dark black blood and he takes a brief moment to go over every single invective he knows.

“Are you okay?” That’s Roman’s voice. The doorknob jiggles and Virgil is endlessly glad that he’d locked it on the way in. “It sounded like you fell. Did you fall?”

“No,” Virgil says and immediately winces at the distortion. Good. Great. Wonderful. Now Roman will be worried.

“Are you sure?” Roman demands. 

“Yeah, I just--” Virgil clears his throat and grits his teeth, trying to will himself to some semblance of normalcy. “Hit my head.”

“If you say so,” Roman says breezily, and if Virgil didn’t know him he might assume that Roman wasn’t worried at all. As good of an actor as he is, Virgil can see right through him. He knows all about worry, after all. He  _ is _ worry. 

“I say so,” Virgil says firmly. It’ll take him probably another ten minutes to get back to normal, but he can do it. He just needs time, and no more surprises, and some space to breathe in. He wants-- he wants his room. He wants comfort. He wants to jam his headphones over his ears (and are his ears pointed now? they usually are, when he’s like this) and bury his head in a pillow and just sit still until he’s calm enough to focus on shifting his bones back into place. That’s what he wants. Can he get that? Maybe, if Roman leaves, he can hurry down the hall and slip into his room without anyone noticing.

“If you’re fine, I’m going downstairs,” Roman calls through the door. He sounds bored, now, and Virgil doesn’t think it’s an act. He listens intently for the sound of Roman’s boots clomping down the stairs and exhales, turning to the door. He cracks it and peers out into the deserted hallway. Quickly, and with all the quiet he can muster, he darts into his room.

The weight of the room’s aura is welcome. It’s heavy and sluggish and with the underlying current of urgency that he needs to kick-start his brain into working again. Normally, the sweeping darkness of the room is unsettling, but when he’s tall and long-limbed and horrifying, it feels like home. It feels like a place he belongs.

It only takes five minutes for Virgil to cram himself back into a human shape, and he cracks each and every one of his knuckles before shrugging on his hoodie and creeping downstairs. His hands are still shaking, but he’s fine. He’s breathing normally and he doesn’t hit his head trying to enter the kitchen, so he must be fine.

The others are there already, of course. Patton is leaning against the counter with a huge grin on his face, waving his hands excitedly as he rambles at Logan and Roman, who are seated at the kitchen table.

“Virgil!” Patton shouts brightly. Virgil gives him a two-finger salute and a small smile as he takes his place at the table. Roman gives him a brief worried look, but the scrape on Virgil’s head had closed up as soon as he’d calmed down enough to control his appearance. He’s genuinely fine now. Just tired.

“We are all assembled, Patton,” Logan says with a note of suppressed impatience in his voice. He waves a hand for Patton to get on with it.

“Oh! Yeah! My surprise! I finally learned how to make bread!” Patton shouts. He whirls around and opens a cabinet, reaching inside and grabbing at a plate. On the plate is a loaf of bread. It’s lopsided and lightly burned on one side, but it appears generally edible. Patton brandishes at at them, beaming.

“Padre! It’s magnificent!” Roman declares with a sweep of an arm. 

“That is definitely a loaf of bread,” Logan says, ever observant.

“Cool,” Virgil says. He can’t believe the surprise was a loaf of bread. He got scared by the concept of a loaf of bread. He sure is easy to startle. With a rueful smile at his own jumpiness, he turns on his phone, content to waste a few minutes lost in the eternal downward spiral that is his tumblr dashboard. 

“Well, are we going to try it, or are we gonna keep staring at it?” Patton asks, laughing. He sets the plate on the counter and turns to rifle through the drawer where they keep silverware. Halfway there, his elbow knocks into a stray glass, left abandoned on the counter, and it goes flying. That’s when all hell breaks loose.

The sound of glass shattering isn’t, in and of itself, terrifying. Neither is the sound of Patton gasping. But put them together and add in the fact that Virgil wasn’t looking to see what, exactly, went wrong, and it’s just enough to send panic through his chest and down his spine. 

“Fuck,” Virgil grits out. His phone shatters in his hand. His heart is beating too fast. 

“Whoops!” Patton laughs. He’s fine. He’s completely fine, bending to pick up the bigger pieces of glass while Logan hurries to grab the broom. No one is hurt and they’re all completely fine, but Virgil--jumpy, anxious, always on the edge of panic--startles right out of his skin. Literally.

“You okay there, my Dark Knightmare?” Roman asks. Virgil tries to get out an answer but his mouth is wrong, his mouth is full of sharp edges and his tongue is too long and oh no, oh no, ohnonononono--

“Oh my god,” Patton squeaks out. Virgil stands abruptly and hits his head on the ceiling. The last thing he sees before he sinks out in a panic is a look of blind terror on Patton’s face.

He doesn’t think he’ll be able to forget that, as long as he lives.  
  
  


It takes him nearly an hour to relax enough to mold his shape, and when he does, there is no comfort in it. He spends a while flat on his back on his bed, just breathing and thinking.

This is the worst case scenario. The others know that the Dark Sides aren’t exactly… normal. Deceit is, perhaps, the most human of them all. The others are a mess of long limbs and glowing eyes and grinning, glistening fangs. Virgil is far from the most horrifying of them, but he knows he isn’t exactly something lovely to look at. He’s a nightmare given sentience. He’s fear itself, physically  _ and _ emotionally. And now they’ve  _ seen him _ .

He’s going to have to withdraw. He can’t just leave, he knows that now, but he’s going to have to start spending more time in his room. Maybe he’ll only leave at night. Maybe he’ll get lucky and the others will still be willing to be around him, sometimes, if he’s careful. Maybe if he promises to be normal--no, that’s wishful thinking. That’s impossible.

There’s a knock at his bedroom door and Virgil flinches. He holds his form--small miracle--but it’s a close thing. 

“What?” he growls. Might as well shrug that dark persona back on. He has a feeling he’s going to need it.

“Can we come in, kiddo? Just for a second?” Patton calls. His voice is soft and even. 

“I guess,” Virgil says with a shrug.  _ Let’s get this over with _ .

Patton cracks open the door and gives Virgil a tiny smile. Over his shoulder, Roman is on tiptoes trying to peer in, and he shoves past Patton the instant the door is open. He marches right up to the edge of Virgil’s bed, points a finger at him, and says, “You’re a monster.”

Virgil flinches, biting down on his tongue. He draws his shoulders up around his head and fists his hands in the sheets, ready to be shouted at, accused, hated.

“That’s so flippin’ sweet, man!” Roman shouts, and Virgil’s heart stops.

“It--what?” he asks. His voice sounds like gravel on sandpaper, but at least it’s not distorted. He’s more firmly in this body, now that he’s had a while to collect himself. 

“You’re so cool!” Roman gushes. He swings his arms wide. “You’re, like, a million feet tall! It’s far more imposing and terrifying than anything I could have dreamed up, and that’s saying something!”

Logan readjusts his glasses on his face, saying, “I’ll admit I had wondered about your physical form, given that you often seem more aligned with the Dark Sides than with the three of us.” Virgil’s face falls and Logan shakes his head, continuing, “No, that is not meant as an insult. It is merely a statement of fact. Things change, Virgil, and you are one of us now, appearances notwithstanding.”

“Yeah, kiddo, you’re family. We love you, no matter what you look like!” Patton finishes. He reaches out a hand and Virgil stares at it for a moment before gathering his courage and extending one of his own. There are no claws, only blunt fingernails, but he’s still terrified that Patton will flinch. That doesn’t happen, though, and Virgil finds himself being drawn into a very tight hug. He rests his head on Patton’s shoulder and breathes in the sense of security. 

“How tall are you, by the way?” Roman asks. His eyes are lit up with excitement and he’s smiling.

“Uh, I don’t know? I don’t exactly measure,” Virgil says.

Something like curiosity takes up residence in Logan’s eyes, but before he can open his mouth to say anything, Patton cuts him off with a firm, “Virgil doesn’t have to do anything he’s not comfortable with.”

“No, I’m fine, I just.” Virgil can’t string words together past the weird mess of fear and relief mingling in his chest. He wants to thank them for being nice to him about his horrifying appearance, wants to make them promise to not run screaming from him, wants to wriggle his way back into Patton’s arms and cry a lot of grateful tears, but he doesn’t do any of those things. He looks each of them in the eyes and sees only earnest acceptance there. 

Slowly, a grin stretches across his face, too wide and too sharp.

“I could show you,” he says, and he does. 


End file.
